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Monday, 14 February 2011

Moscow - Winter in monochrome

Moscow winters tend to become very monochrome in every sense of the word. When you stare out of the window everything looks like a black and white Japanese painting, all misty swirls and opaque brushstrokes. Today is one such day. The steam pouring out from the tall chimneys of electric power stations around Moscow adds a misty mystery to the atmosphere as the vapour drifts in copious clouds across the horizon. I'm not sure what long periods of such conditions do to the human psyche - perhaps I'm better off not knowing, especially after fifteen years as a resident.

To go out in -10 with a freezing wind blowing billowing snow off the north east or where ever, is not a pleasant prospect and most sane people avoid it. So what to do. No problem. Firstly I am writing this new blog. This I hope will be an occasional series of pieces or chronicles about a film makers life in Moscow and occasionally just the life of a simple human being who happens to live in Moscow.

Generally however the perspective will be from film making because that is what I do - make films in Russia and from time to time in other places as well - Japan for instance in 2009. As yet I am not sure exactly what shape this blog will take and how the content will develop but it is likely to have a more personal tone with simple and maybe even mundane reflections. However as the artist and photographer Alexander Rodchenko once wrote. "Our task in photography is to make the extraordinary appear mundane and the mundane appear extraordinary". Such a philosophy can unearth unexpected and rich deposits of knowledge and insight. So taking this as my starting point, off we go.